


Last Rites

by KanuKoris



Series: The Bishop DeSoto, Long May He Reign [8]
Category: The Outer Worlds (Video Game)
Genre: Bishop Max, Board Ending, Darkest Timeline, Death Row, Death Sentence, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Other characters mentioned - Freeform, Prison, back to Enemies, trial
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:27:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22231054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KanuKoris/pseuds/KanuKoris
Summary: For her actions, Captain Hawthorne has been sentenced to death and awaits her execution in Tartarus. The Bishop visits her to administer her last rites.
Relationships: The Captain/Maximillian DeSoto
Series: The Bishop DeSoto, Long May He Reign [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1567744
Comments: 23
Kudos: 54





	1. Chapter 1

Bishop DeSoto didn’t expect to find himself in the gallery box of another high profile sentencing so soon, but he and what seemed like everyone in Byzantium had come to see the disgrace of Captain Alex Hawthorne.

“You have been charged with Sedition and High Treason.”

Captain Hawthorne stood tall, looking proud and commanding despite the handcuffs and chains. She had a jaunty set to her shoulders and a charming smirk on her face. Still the romantic image of the dashing rogue Captain. The Bishop fancied he heard some disappointed sobs from the public gallery as Hawthorne’s fans prayed the charges were untrue.

Hawthorne laughed and asked, “Is that all?”

A furious scowl deepened on the Supreme Justice’s face. “Your sentence is death by firing squad.”

There were gasps from the public gallery and a flurry of urgent, hushed whispers as the newscasters broadcast the scandal of the century. The Bishop remained stoic, a finger merely tapping against his temple as he watched the proceedings. He thought that the Captain looked very brave, still grinning as the order for her execution was read out to her. Was she not afraid to die?

“The time and date of your sentence will be scheduled in a later proceeding. You will be held in detention at Tartarus until said time. And Hawthorne,” the Supreme Justice had a nasty smile on his face, “I’ll be sure to make you a high priority.”

Hawthorne threw her head back and laughed, unmoved. She was escorted from her stand and out of the courtroom, and when she passed by the Bishop she blew him a mocking kiss in the air.

He watched, eyes narrowed, and his thoughts dark.

***

“Vodka today. And I’ll toast to your diligence.”

Akande held up her glass briefly in the air, before taking a healthy sip. It was an incredibly rare occasion for her to be seated across from him, rather than at her usual post behind her desk, but this was not officially a meeting. It was thirty minutes of scheduled ‘social drinks’.

“I found your methods unconventional at first, but your handling of Hawthorne is making me reconsider my position on Confession. Perhaps it would be worth training more practitioners and implementing it on a regular basis.”

Bishop DeSoto gave a non-committal shrug as he swirled the vodka in his glass. “I think it might be difficult to recreate the circumstances that made this instance… particularly effective.”

“How do you mean?”

The Bishop drank, rolling the taste of the liquor around his tongue as he tried to find an explanation that wouldn’t overly condemn him. “Not every Confessor will have a prior relationship or history like I had with the Captain.”

Akande nodded, taking in what he said and mentally working her way through a solution. “Yes… but we can recreate emotional associations and bonds. That’s interesting, DeSoto, I’ll have to ask the Kolway R&D team if they have any chemical enhancers that we could introduce.”

The Bishop circled a finger around the rim of his glass, contemplative. Cautiously he asked, “Are you disappointed at all?”

“Be more specific.”

“You can’t leverage Hawthorne’s notoriety in favor of the corporation any longer. She’s not a ‘hero’ anymore, she’s public enemy number one. Her image is tarnished. Isn’t that a waste of your investment?” He asked.

But Akande didn’t seem displeased, as she folded her hands in her lap, her glass of vodka cradled in her fingers. “No. The Hawthorne ‘hero’ investment didn’t generate as much return as I would have hoped, but there was no loss. It’s better that it resolved now, before she had time to do too much damage. And the corporation being able to cut down a dangerous influence swiftly, and decisively, is just as good for PR.”

Akande then let out a wistful sigh, tapping a finger against her glass. “Sentimentality has no place in decision-making, and a public execution is the right choice, but I won’t deny it’s a bit of a shame.”

The Bishop looked up at her, surprised. “In what way?”

The Adjutant lifted her glass into the air as if she were making another toast. “Because she was unique.”

The Bishop raised his glass along with her in communion, and drank.

***

Hawthorne sat and waited patiently as the guard chained her cuffs to a ring on the floor. She was under the highest security possible, especially after the stunt she had pulled breaking Felix out of the very prison she was now housed in.

The Bishop had already been waiting when they brought her out to meet her visitor. She was wearing the familiar grey uniforms all of the prisoners wore, one that he remembered from his time on the other side of the clear barrier. She looked in high spirits, healthy even, in complete and utter defiance of whatever punishment she was meant to be serving.

“You’re a bold one, Maximillian.” She sounded deceptively cheerful. “Let me guess. This is all some elaborate foreplay. Throw on one of these uniforms and let’s tussle in the yard.”

There it was. Hawthorne was teasing when she wanted to be cruel. Deflection and mockery were the ways she guarded herself. He could hear the steel edge hiding in her bubbly laughter. He could recognize the molten core of rage simmering within her, though she dressed it up with winks and jokes.

“The judiciary committee has come up with the schedule for your sentence. I requested to be the one to break the news to you.”

She lifted an eyebrow, the hint of a sneer in her voice. “Did the Adjutant throw you a treat for being such a well-behaved boy?”

“It’s two days from now. In the prison’s courtyard. At noon.” The Bishop didn’t rise to any of her bait, his voice regretful. “I’m sorry, Alex.”

“What right do you have to feel sad for any of this?” She spat, the fangs coming out in her words now. Her chest was heaving as she struggled to keep her anger in check. “Save it for the aetherwave serial. Aren’t you past the point of putting on an act for me?”

“It isn’t an act. It was never an act.”

Hawthorne rolled her eyes and spat a bitter laugh out the side of her mouth. “I’m swallowing a bullet in two days, Max. Why are you still lying to me? _You won_.”

The Bishop was unsure of what his expectations were in going to visit the Captain that day. He didn’t want to explain himself, and he didn’t feel the need. Hawthorne knew where he had stood the whole time, and she of all people couldn’t begrudge him for doing what he needed to in order to survive. He thought that he had wanted to see her angry, to shake the persona of ‘the Captain’ and get a glimpse of raw ‘Alex’ one more time.

But in the face of her anger, which had once excited him, he only felt frozen. He was not interested when there was no chase. He was only hit, in too direct of a way, with the sinking realization that she was a beaten woman. That Captain Hawthorne had been frozen, lost in space, resurrected and flung outside of her time, poised for greatness – to be reduced to this. A prisoner awaiting death.

He did not know how to reconcile the queasy weight in his gut, as his conviction that he had done the right thing, grappled with the voice inside of him that insisted he would miss her.

“I suppose you always were a coward.” His eyes snapped up to her. He realized he must have fallen silent for too long, and now Hawthorne had fixed him with a hawk-like gaze, dissecting him with a look. “You chased after Bakonu’s journal, chased after answers your whole life, and for what? When you were finally confronted with the truth, it terrified you so much you ran… You couldn’t handle the upheaval of your entire world so you ran as far as you could in the opposite direction.”

The Bishop didn’t realize he had risen to his feet, until he saw Hawthorne tug at the chains linked through her cuffs as she tried to rise with him. His skin felt hot and there was a tremble in his hands, he was seized with such a violent rage. That was the Captain’s singular talent – she could inflame his mercurial temper with a snap of her fingers.

Hawthorne tugged again on the chain, battling with her chair, and laughed. “You’re still terrified, Max! Did you serve me up because you were scared of me too? You don’t even realize you need me. You need me to be the brave one for you.”

The prison guards leapt on her, two grabbing her by the arms. She was causing a disturbance, and they unchained her from the visiting unit and dragged her away, cutting their time short.

The Bishop could still hear her mocking laughter ringing in his ears as he turned heel and swept out of the prison.


	2. Chapter 2

The Bishop returned to Tartarus prison the morning of Captain Hawthorne’s execution. Though her scheduled time was still a couple hours away, the newscasters had already begun setting up their equipment in the prison yard where it was meant to take place. Chairs were being set up, the yard’s dirt floor being swept.

The prison guard brought him to the door of the Captain’s cell and instructed him, “The prisoner’s hands are cuffed. There is no object in the cell that can be used as a weapon. If the prisoner becomes agitated or violent, or if you require assistance, knock on the cell door.”

“I understand.”

The guard inserted an access card into the door and held it open. It shut behind the Bishop with a heavy ‘clang’.

Hawthorne was standing by the small slit window in her cell, watching the preparations unfold in the prison yard below her. She did not turn to look at him as he approached.

“I am here to administer your last rites.”

She still did not acknowledge him, so the Bishop took in a readying breath and began to recite, “The following shall act as a final statement and releases you, the prisoner, and the Halcyon Holdings Corporation from any future—“

“Oh, _spare me_.”

Her voice was small and diamond hard. He came closer to her and saw that her eyes were red-rimmed. Her face tear-stained. She saw that her private shame had been discovered, and she scrubbed at her cheek with a rough sleeve.

“If you’re legally obligated to be here, fine, but for the love of the Law, don’t waste my final hours spouting that bullshit at me.”

He was content to do so, and gently said, “If there are any last statements or words you wish to impart, you may do that with me now.”

A wet, mirthless laugh bubbled up from her. She finally turned to look at him, and he saw the extent to which her sorrow had ravaged her face. He had to fight back the urge to wipe the hot tears away from her eyes.

“I don’t have any last words. Wishes, maybe.”

“What is your last wish?”

She looked at him and he had the eerie sensation that she could read some secret on his face that he wasn’t privy to. With a heavy voice, she said, “I wish you were a better man. I wish I knew you in a different life. And I wish…”

Her words stung, they pierced him like cruel bullets, but he was frozen as she stepped away from the window and came over to him. She pressed her last wish to his lips, her mouth hot and raw, and there was no hunger there, only the deep aching yearning for something impossible.

When the Bishop left the Captain’s cell, she was looking out her window again, watching them prepare for her death.

***

“Take ten paces forward.”

Hawthorne, free from handcuffs, marched forward ten paces until she was just a few feet from the prison wall.

“And turn around.”

The Captain did, and everyone in attendance could see the stubborn look on her face. In private, the Bishop had seen her tears, but she had shown up fighting to her execution. The senior members of the Board were the only ones invited to witness and Chairman Rockwell, as well as Adjutant Akande and the Bishop, were given places in the front row.

“Blindfold?” The Tartarus warden asked, but Hawthorne shook her head ‘no’.

“Get on with it and shoot her already,” the Chairman groused. His ego had smarted from Hawthorne’s betrayal, after he had shown her his favoritism.

“Firing squad – approach.”

Five guards encased in elite armor stepped forward and then raised their plasma rifles in unison. The Bishop heard the familiar whine of the chambers heating up as they prepared to fire.

He felt a hot, sick sensation sweep through him. His eyes found Hawthorne’s face and he was unable to tear his gaze away.

_I wish_ …

“Ready… _fire!_ ”

Hawthorne stared gamely on, refusing to shut her eyes, a determined look blazing on her face.

The firing squad turned on their heel and suddenly fired into the crowd. Tartarus guards fell down, struck by the rounds. There were screams as the firing squad shot again, more guards and security personnel being struck down in surprise. The Board members in the audience shrieked with fear, an electric tension snapping in the atmosphere around them.

The Bishop watched the scene unfold in mute shock. Hawthorne stood watching it all, a smirk lighting up on her face.

The firing squad moved back and took position in a defensive circle around Hawthorne. They each pulled off their helmets and revealed themselves to be her crew of loyal friends: Nyoka, Ellie, Felix, Parvati, and even Junlei Tennyson of Groundbreaker.

And the Bishop stood on the other side of enemy lines.

There were more gasps and shrieks as a ship roared overhead, the sound of the engine deafening, its thrusters whipping up wind and dirt around them. The Bishop almost felt a laugh fall from his lips as he saw Monarch Stellar Industries signage painted on the ship’s hull.

Captain Hawthorne and her crew shot their way out of the prison yard, grabbing onto rope ladders that unfurled from the MSI ship and carried them off into the air, escaping above the heads of the Board.

Chairman Rockwell was too stunned to do anything except shout for guards that were dead all around him.

Adjutant Akande had already left the premises, her urgent strides sweeping through the prison so that she could counteract swiftly.

Hawthorne laughed, holding onto a rope ladder, her hair buffeted in the wind. She had built her reputation on being able to do the impossible, and she had just done it again.

The revolution had started.

And the Bishop watched her disappear into the sky, thinking that she had tricked him once again, and that this insufferable woman had just kicked off a fucking war. And there was a voice, that he tried to bury deep within him, that wondered why he was not on that ship with her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, the next installment is the last one. We're getting to the end of the series and I'm feeling real emotional.
> 
> (Also - I couldn't kill the Captain!)
> 
> (Also also, even though he isn't here in person I think Sanjar LOVES being a rebel and is eating this up)


End file.
